Rockwell Collins, NASA team to develop new analysis tools to verify safety of flight critical systems

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has selected Rockwell Collins to develop new software analysis tools for verifying the safety of flight critical systems for future commercial aircraft. Under the terms of the one-year contract, Rockwell Collins will develop a set of software analysis tools, conduct demonstrations, and make recommendations to NASA.

Avionics systems are increasing in complexity as new capabilities are added that reduce carbon emissions, increase navigation performance and prepare for the FAA NextGen airspace initiative. This increased complexity brings the need for new methods for analysis that will assure that the system will operate safely under all conditions.

“Complex avionics systems can literally have billions of modes and states,” said John Borghese, vice president of the Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center. “By incorporating formal mathematical verification – also known as Formal Methods - we can detect and remove software bugs and security vulnerabilities early in the development process when it’s less costly to correct errors.”

Rockwell Collins leadership in Formal Methods began with basic research into the methodology and tool development over a decade ago. Recently Rockwell Collins was awarded a $16 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS), to develop new Formal Methods tools to provide cyber security solutions for unmanned air vehicles.